The most plentiful I have ever seen hawks was at Point Pelee; yet in this
same locality we had three men 
in one week owning young apple orchards, come to my home and enquire how
to poison mice. Here at my 
bird sanctuary where I am condemned for killing hawks there are practically
no mice at all. 
Great how some men can give advice on running a bird sanctuary to raise birds
and control them, and 
possibly they had the Wind down nearly the whole year to keep the sun from
dazzling their eyes. Mother 
always said, "An old maid could give you more free advice on how to
raise a family than ten successful mothers." 
If you have a hatching of several hundred pure bred choice chickens and put
them out, and hawks start 
reducing your flock, are you supposed to go in the house and read some Government
bulletin or other literature 
to find out whether this is a valuable hawk nine days out of ten. I say right
here, take ex-President 
Calvin Coolidge's advice when he said, "Let every man do the duty closest
to him," or in other words, take 
the gun and control him because when your chickens are gone he will only
start at your neighbors. 
Knowing the depredations of the middle size and smaller hawks as I do, and
have known all my life, I 
am completely bewildered to know why 'intelligent men will advocate the stocking
of a country with song, 
insectivorous and game birds and make stringent laws to punish even a child
for molesting one of them, and at 
the same time frame laws protecting hawks that eat these useful birds up
alive. 
One great excuse is that these hawks and owls ki I mice. Let me ask you this
question  Are mice the 
farmers' great dread in America? No; the multiplying of weed seeds that the
majority of song and insectiv- 
orous birds live on throughout the width and breadth of America is what is
bothering us, and I never was 
prouder of our own local Game Protective Association than I was at our last
meeting, when they stood up 
unanimously in favor of putting the quail on the song bird list. The Bob-White
Quail and the Mourning Dove 
are the two most valuable birds we have on the North American continent,
and if any person tells you that each 
bird will destroy as many, and more, than ten thousand weed seeds in one
day you believe it, and if we want 
these birds to increase we have got to reduce the hawks in the same proportion
as other birds have been 
reduced the last fifty years. Remember, one Sharp Shinned Hawk will kill
hundreds of birds in a year. 
It is not humanity and the boys of our land that are keeping our song and
insectivorous birds down; educa- 
tion has stopped that. It is the birds' natural enemies that are all out
of proportion. 
One evening last Fall four miles from my home when the Marsh hawks were migrating
there were fourteen 
in sight at once and yet men are telling me "They are on the decrease,"
they must have poor eye-sight or 
the sun dazzles their eyes. Talk about hawks being scarce, I shot seventeen
hawks in less than three hours. 
Do not forget readers these various hawks follow our valuable birds to the
South and back again. 
Several of my most particular friends who do not see eye to eye with me on
the hawk question, but who 
are among my best friends just the same, are coming from as far as three
hundred miles to tag young Mourning 
doves around my little thirty-acre plantation, where the doves nest by the
hundreds. And this same class of 
men will take me in their parks near their homes and wonder why the Mourning
doves, Cardinals and Robins 
are not as plentiful in their parks, and in the same breath call my attention
to a mother Crow on her nest, and 
possibly to what they call a beautiful hawk sitting on a dead limb clear
across the golf course, and these two 
birds dominating the whole situation. Why do not these men go to these places
to tag Mourning doves and 
Robins instead of coming here, where we control the hawks and other natural
enemies? And, by the way, 
right here let me say to the men of the world, because we do not see eye
to eye along the line of any study, do 
not let that make us enemies, because there is nothing that will help a friend
more than real friendly construc- 
tive criticism. An Indian once said, "Everybody think like me, every
body want my squaw." 
So many people write in and say they like actions of hawks. All I can say
is, how can a man be humane 
and watch a hawk come down out of the air and catch and eat a song, insectivorous,
weed seed eating bird, eat 
it practically alive? To me, it is more cruel than a Spanish bull fight I
read about, which means either life or 
death to the bull or the fighter, because the innoent bird has no fighting
chance. 
To read some letters that are darted at me, one would believe I did not know
an eagle from a gnat, 
but nevertheless where is the man in America, who has watched and killed
more hawks and owls than I have 
the last fifty-five years, and know for myself from all standpoints their
relations and their depredations among 
all other birds; and if some of the men who have written criticising letters
to me would go out in the fields and 
woods and investigate for themselves, I have this much confidence in them,
that they would write letters of 
apology. 
I have been opening hawks crops all my life and have always known what they
lived on, but so many men 
claimed the sanctuary attracted the hawks, that last September when hawks
were migrating I went a quarter of 
a mile east of my sanctuary, built a blind in a fence corner and used a cage
eight feet square with twenty-five 
to fifty Bronze Grackle (Crow Black Birds) and Cow birds for decoys and in
the Fail as the hawks in this 
locality migrate from East to the West, I got the hawks fully a quarter of
a mile before they got to the sanctuary. 
Each night as the weather was warm I would pack them in common salt and express
them to the Biological 
Department of the Ontario Royal Museum at Toronto, Ontario. The accompanying
report sent back to me 
speaks for itself. They were all killed by myself. The owls I shot at night
around the sanctuary. All I wish 
to say is, during September, kill this many hawks yourself and do not take
mine or the other fellow's word for 
it. The facts are, I am giving the balance of my life to the study of conservation,
and I know I have struck 
a plan to test out the good and bad hawks, and if you men who are constantly
writing offensive letters to me 
because of my stand against the hawks and Crows, are not satisfied with this
Black Bird decoy proposition, 
next year I will use Bob-White quail and Mourning doves for decoys. I do
not expect to shoot the three big, 
clumsy variety of hawks, for as I have said before, while they will kill
a few rabbits, snakes, etc., I know they are 
not destructive to our small and loveable birds. Moreover, I know Mr. Redtail
will kill Crows and I know 
that the death of one Crow means more live songsters. 
EXAMINATION OF ,HAWKS AT ROYAL MUSEUM OF ZOOLOGY 
Bloor St. and Avenue Road, Toronto 5, Ontario 
1930           Species                            Contents 
August 20.-Marsh Hawk-Remains of a young Mourning Dove.